by Francis King
Mrs Pavlovsky arrived with two cups of stewed, over-sweetened Indian tea on a tin tray. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped, breathless from the climb up all those stairs. ‘ Some of its slopped into the saucers.’ She set down the cups. ‘Were you listening to him again?’ she asked Dad in an indignant voice.
‘Trying to. But this son of mine wouldn’t let me. His Nuremberg speech. Very important.’
‘You don’t want to waste time on that rubbish. Anyway the newspapers tomorrow will be full of it.’
For a while, facing each other, he in the armchair and I on the hardbacked chair, we were silent, sipping at our cups. Then he said: ‘I keep telling her that I like my tea weak. But does she take a blind bit of notice? Of course not!’ Then he relented: ‘ Well, I suppose I mustn’t complain. After all, I don’t pay her to feed me. Or to shop for me. Or to wash and iron my shirts. She’s a good old soul. She’s had a tough life.’
Again there was a silence.
Then, as he often did, he began to tell me about a dream. The dream was about the trenches and, as confused now in the telling as it must have been in the dreaming, it circled round and round on itself, a deadly snake with its tail in its mouth. ‘… It was Bonzo Grace I was first trying to find, but then I realised that old Bonzo was gone, finished, and so I thought: Then I must find Johnny what’s-his-name. Only how was I going to find him with those whizz-bangs coming over and the crump of the shells and so little light …?’ I wished that he would stop. There was sweat on his forehead, the muscles in his throat were taut.
Eventually, his voice faltered, expired. He had shut his eyes. Then he said, in the voice of a frightened child: ‘I don’t want to have that dream again, I can tell you.’
But I knew that he would; he would.
Again there was a silence, broken only by one desolate sigh from him, followed by another. His eyes were still closed, as though to shut out something, a ghost from the trenches – or of the trenches – invisible to me. Then he shook himself, sat up.
‘Id almost forgotten! I’ve got a little present for you. It was your seventeenth last Tuesday, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. I wish you’d come to the party.’
‘I was planning to come. I honestly was. I got myself all togged out and then, well, you know how it is with me. The thought of that long train journey, miles and miles, underground, buried … And then all the people … And that ghastly nancy boy of hers …’
‘There weren’t all that many people,’ I said resentfully. ‘And Tim wasn’t there.’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t to know that, was I? And in any case, that train journey … Sorry, old boy. It just wasn’t on. Though I wanted to be with you and I wanted to have an excuse for seeing your mother.’ He staggered to his feet. ‘Anyway …’ He drew a deep sigh. Then he crossed the room and tugged at one of the drawers of the fumed oak tallboy. ‘Blast!’ The drawer was warped and he had difficulty in jerking it open. He scrabbled in a jumble of underwear and eventually came up with something. ‘ That’s it! it’s what they call an inro. You’ll know more about the things than I do. Japanese … Well, it was a day when for once, don’t ask me why, I was totally free of panic. In fact, I was feeling – as our American cousins would say – like a hundred dollars, even a thousand dollars. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and I thought: Why don’t I take myself out for a stroll? Which is what I did.’ (Get on with it, get on with it, I was thinking in impatience.) ‘Just beyond Cullen’s there’s this little junk shop. I sometimes drop in, though I don’t often buy anything – can’t afford to! The woman who owns the place is a lady, you know, oh, yes, very classy. I should guess that things went badly for her and that running a junk shop was the way she decided to keep herself in funds. There are old clothes there – filthy, often stinking – and furniture even more junky than in here … And bedclothes … Well, while I was poking around, and chatting away to her while I did so – she’s quite an amusing old trout – I suddenly saw this inro thing, on a window sill. ‘‘Hello, hello!’’ I said to myself. ‘‘I know someone who might like that, someone who’s just had a birthday.’’ I haggled for a while and eventually I managed to knock down the price by a quid or two. She’s tough, but I think she likes me … So …’ He held it out to me. ‘What do you think of it?’
My first feeling was one of indignation with the unknown woman who had sold it to him; my second, fury with him for once again being conned. But I hadn’t the heart to tell him that the inro now resting in my palm was probably no more than ten years old; that it was not really an inro but a clumsy imitation of one, mass-manufactured for gullible people like himself; that I did not want it, in fact hated it for its crudeness and ugliness and spuriousness. Instead I smiled at him: ‘ Oh, Dad, how lovely. But you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have!’
‘You do like it, don’t you?’ He looked at me beseechingly, perhaps having guessed what my real feelings might be. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Of course! it’s terrific. I’ve always wanted to have an inro. I bought a netsuke in Portobello Road the other day, with the money that Aunt Hilda gave me for my birthday, but this is the first inro I’ve ever owned. Thank you. Thank you so much.’
‘Now take good care of it. Don’t lose it.’
‘Of course I’ll take good care of it.’ I rewrapped it in its tissue paper and put it in the right-hand pocket of my jacket, thinking: But he needs that money. He needs it. Why the hell did he chuck it away? Oh, what a bloody fool!
He was still smiling at me. ‘What a lot you know about antiques! I wish I knew a half of what you know. I don’t know much about anything,’ he added with a rueful laugh. ‘ The War came too soon for me. And then, after it …’
‘Shall I go and get you some fags?’ Just as he found it almost impossible to leave this tiny, stuffy room under the eaves, so I now found it almost impossible to stay in it.
‘Would you? Would you mind? The only trouble is, I don’t seem to have …’ Clowning it up now, he put on an act of turning out his pockets. ‘Pension not due till Monday next.’
‘I’ll pay. Don’t bother.’
I rushed out of the room and raced down the stairs.
I rarely smoked, either illicitly at school, although Bob often did so, or at home when Ma was out. But now, to keep Dad company, I sat down opposite him and lit first his cigarette (he coughed asthmatically as he drew on it) and then one for myself.
‘Good, eh?’
I hated Woodbines, with their saccharescent aftertaste, even more than I hated other cigarettes. But I nodded. ‘Terrific.’
‘If it weren’t for these’ – he held out the cigarette between trembling fingers – ‘I sometimes think I’d just pack it in. They reconcile me to the mysterious ways of God.’ He laughed; and then the laugh turned into a cough. ‘Anyway, they do less harm than the bottle. Somehow the bottle has never had any appeal for me.’ He drew pensively on the cigarette; then he asked (I, too, had been thinking of Ma at that moment): ‘I hope your mother isn’t still, er, overdoing it. Is she?’
I shook my head. ‘Not too bad.’ But the night before I had had to support her up the stairs to bed, and at breakfast I had seen her, through the glass door to the kitchen – the cook was ill and the maid was away, since it was Sunday – picking up the half-empty gin bottle and gulping from it, while waiting for the toast to be done. I blamed Tim’s sudden disappearance.
Soon after that, I looked at my watch and said that I must go.
‘Must you? So soon?’
‘I’m afraid so. I said I’d take Ma to the flicks.’
It was a lie. I had merely had enough.
‘Next time you come, I’ll pay you back for the fags.’
‘Don’t be silly! You’ve given me that terrific inro. The fags are a small return.’
Suddenly, he had put his arms round me. He was hugging me to him, his head on my shoulder. Then I felt his body shaking against mine and I knew that he was crying.
‘Oh, Dad, please, please!’ I fel
t horribly embarrassed; and the embarrassment made me angry.
‘Sorry, old chap.’ Like a child, he rubbed his eyes with his screwed-up fists. ‘ Don’t know what came over me. it’s being alone like this … hopeless … helpless … missing your mother … missing you …’
I could stand it no longer. ‘Well, goodbye, Dad. I’ll try to come next Monday. On Tuesday I go back to school. End of the hols.’
‘Goodbye, Mervyn!’ He tried to catch hold of my hand; but I ignored that and hurried out on to the landing.
‘Goodbye!’ I called out. Then I began to race down the stairs.
As I reached the ground floor, the door of Mrs Pavlovsky’s sitting-room opened and first her leggy black cat and then she appeared.
‘Oh – er – Mr Frost … Mervyn …’ Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment. ‘Might I just have a little word? it’s about your papa.’
Oh, lordy, lordy! Was she about to give him notice?
‘Yes, Mrs Pavlovsky? I hope nothing is, er, wrong.’
‘Well, not really.’ She put her head on one side and gave me her sweet, silly smile. ‘It’s just that … the rent …’ Again she put her head on one side, again she gave me that smile, which seemed to be saying: ‘Aren’t I a fool to bring such a thing up?’
‘Hasn’t he paid it?’
‘Not for three weeks. I need that money. I have all kinds of expenses with this house. I hate to trouble him and I hate to trouble you. But I thought that perhaps you could say something to your mama.’
I began to explain that, in a few days, Dad would be getting his pension. As soon as it arrived, I was sure that he would pay her. That would be his first priority, I said.
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right … But …’
Eventually I drew out the wallet which Ma had given me for my birthday. It still contained some of my birthday money. ‘ Let me give you something,’ I said. I tweaked out a pound note. ‘I’m afraid that’s really all …’
‘Oh!’ She was reluctant to take it from me. ‘I didn’t mean that you should … That’s very good of you, Mervyn. Are you sure you can spare it?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Well, in that case …’ She took the note and tucked it into the pocket of her voluminous skirt. ‘I won’t say that it’s not a relief to have something.’
On the underground train I pulled out the inro, peeled back the tissue paper and examined it again. It was even worse than I had thought. What an idiot he was! Why hadn’t he given the money to poor old Mrs Pavlovsky instead of wasting it on something so trashy?
… Now I begin to think of my recent purchaser discovering that other inro. Where did it come from? How is it that I have absolutely no recollection of ever having bought it, indeed of ever having seen it before he held it out to me? Could it be that Dad’s inro, which I long ago mislaid, God knows how, has undergone a mysterious transformation from an object of no aesthetic or financial value into one of both those things? After all, in the end my relationship with him no less mysteriously transmuted itself into something enduring and precious.
Chapter Twelve
After I have skidded my way through the three Sunday papers, I keep returning to the typescript. But Noreen must on no account see it. All the time that she is in the kitchen, busy with the luncheon, I listen for her approach. The desk drawer is out and I have the Sunday Times magazine open on my knee. I can quickly push the typescript into the drawer and pretend to be reading the magazine.
Noreen is singing to herself, in that high, clear voice of hers, the voice of a cathedral choir-boy, not of a woman of eighty-three.
‘Wo die Rose hier blüht, we Reben um Lorbeer sich schlingen …’
It’s Wolf, Hugo Wolf, isn’t it – ‘Anakreons Grab’? I’ve never really been able to do with Wolf but she loves him. She sounds so happy; and perhaps, since Goethe’s poem is about the grave of a happy poet, that is as it should be. But how can I feel happy? It is as though I were sitting with a vial containing some deadly bacillus in my lap, in the knowledge that eventually it will explode from some mysterious pressure mounting within it.
I call out: ‘Can’t I do something?’
‘No, no! Thank you. Everything’s under control.’
I know that every movement that she makes in the kitchen – the stooping to open the oven door, the stretching to fetch down the colander – causes her pain. But she wants her independence; and, even more strongly, she does not wish to acknowledge that, at long last, life has got her on the ropes.
Since, after the rain of yesterday and the day before it, it is now sunny and cloudless, we are going to eat in the garden. Once, long before we came to live here, that garden stretched on and on, down to a little stream; but the previous owners, strapped for money, sold all but a little square to neighbours whom, until then, the stream had always kept at a distance from them. The land thus owned by the neighbours, Noreen and I call Naboth’s Vineyard. We covet it. We also know, sadly, that we shall never be in a position to buy it back, since we now have so little money and the neighbours have so much.
I hear the heels of Noreen’s brogues – except for their smaller size, they are indistinguishable from mine – approaching on the tiles of the kitchen floor, and quickly, in a panic, I thrust the typescript into the drawer, slam the door shut, and then, just as she is entering the room, a tray loaded with crockery and cutlery in her crooked hands, pick up the Sunday Times magazine and bend my head to it.
I look up. ‘Oh, I wish you’d left that to me. it’s far too much for you.’
She rests the edge of the tray on the desk, with a sigh. The skin under her eyes glistens with sweat, her cheek are flushed. It is too hot a day for cooking. ‘What are you reading?’
I glance down, see the photograph. ‘Oh, something about that Madonna creature. Not at all interesting.’
She stares at me, with a look of yearning pity. I know that she knows that I am lying. ‘Something’s on your mind,’ she says.
‘There’s nothing on my mind,’ I say tetchily. ‘Don’t, please, go on about there being something on my mind. Yes, I’m worried about our finances, but when have I not been worried about them? We always pull through. We’re not broke, for God’s sake.’
She shrugs, raises the tray and hobbles out into the garden. Then I hear her talking to the cat: ‘Hello, lovey! Where have you been all morning? I’ve got some lovely giblets for you. You can have them while we’re eating our roast.’
When, eventually, I take the chair opposite to her, she exclaims: ‘Oh, what a lovely, lovely day. The forecast got it all wrong. I’m so glad we can eat out. Have you ever seen such roses? It must be because of all that rain.’
She possesses what I have never possessed: a capacity for joy. This joy bubbles up spontaneously, a secret, fresh spring, when one least expects it. She raises her arms, as though to the sun above the trees before her, and smiles, smiles. ‘Beautiful, beautiful world!’ she exclaims.
Then, miraculously, I too see its beauty, so often hidden from me. The fur of the cat, crouched under a rose bush, is so glossy, and its eyes glitter like mica. I can smell the roses frothing above us and, far off, I can hear – is it really possible? – the water of the stream sliding oyer mossy stones. The bread which she has baked crumbles in my mouth and, soft and cold, I can taste the Normandy butter which I have spread on it. – Now I lift my glass. The Bulgarian red was the cheapest in the supermarket; but I savour it on my palate and even relish the sour aftertaste when I have swallowed it.
‘I never thought I’d be happy, totally happy, in my eighty-fourth year,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you happy?’
I nod. Yes, like her, I am happy, totally happy.
I have forgotten about that vial of deadly poison secreted in my desk.
Chapter Thirteen
Bob first met Ma when, at long last, a few months before that seventeenth birthday, she paid a visit to the school. Parents’ Days, Speech Day and Sports Day had followed each other and she had ne
ver come down for any of them. ‘Aren’t your parents coming?’ my housemaster, form-master, Marie (as we called the matron), Bob and the other boys would ask me, their concern toothed with sadism. I would then trot out the excuses which Ma had given me: she had lumbago, she was going to a wedding, she was touring the Greek islands on the yacht of a friend, she must, she just must get to Covent Garden to hear Lotte Lehmann in Rosenkavalier.
But what about my father? I would then be asked, to reply, sullenly shifty, that he was also busy. Busy with what, at a weekend? Oh, he often worked at weekends, I would reply. Sometimes the questioner would persist: What exactly was it that my father did? He’s in the City, I would say, having heard other boys say the same thing of their fathers.
In fact, Dad was usually alone at the weekends in the huge, cavernous flat in Prince of Wales Drive. (That was before Aunt Bertha had left Mother the house in Campden Hill Square.) By now, his health was better, after he had spent several months at a farm community run by Benedictine monks on the west coast of Scotland. He had gone to bed early and risen early, and had slaved all day at digging, weeding and bedding out, and carrying swill to pigs and hay to cattle. When he had at last returned home, his finger-nails, once so scrupulously kept, were chipped and broken, his lips were chapped, and his face was weather-scarred – ‘ He looks so vulgarly healthy’ was Ma’s comment to me. But, although so much better, he would not himself drive the Armstrong Siddeley (crashed twice by Ma) up the spine of England to the school, and he had a terror of travelling in a train, as he had of travelling on the underground.
When Ma did at last come to Gladbury, it was for Founder’s Day, and Dad, eventually succumbing to her alternate bullying and wheedling, had agreed to accompany her. Dazed, he stepped out of the car and, jerking in a circle, peered around him. He had himself been a boy at Gladbury, leaving it at the age of seventeen to volunteer for the War. ‘Strange, strange,’ he muttered.